APPENDIX. 493 



Carefully scrape all the fat from the inside of the skin and all bits of flesh, 

 and wash off all the blood from both sides, so that the skin shall be thoroughly 

 clean. Now rub the inside of the skin with strong arsenical soap, after which 

 apply powdered alum plentifully to every inch of inner surface. Put on as 

 much alum as the skin will absorb, and on the leg-bones as well as the skin, to 

 make them dry quickly ; then hang the skin over a large pole in a shady place 

 where the wind will strike it. Be careful not to stretch the skin unduly. Keep 

 it well spread out, so that the air will reach every part of it freely. Turn the skin 

 about every other day and expose the hair side. In a few days, if the skin has a 

 fair chance, it will begin to get stiff and hard, and then it should be taken down 

 and folded up neatly, hair inside. Leave it in an open place a little longer, 

 and it will become almost as hard as a board, the best condition possible for it. 

 A skin cured in this way can at any time afterward be softened, and either 

 stuffed with gratifying success, or made into a rug of the most desirable kind. 



The skull must be cleaned by simply cutting and scraping the flesh cleanly 

 from it with a knife, removing the brain with a bent wire or a piece of hoop 

 iron, rubbing the skull with the arsenical soap, and allowing it to dry. Put a 

 large bunch of tow, cotton, or rags between the teeth and around them, and 

 tie the jaws tightly together to prevent the teeth from getting broken or lost. 

 The skull should in all cases accompany a skin which is to be mounted as a 

 museum specimen, or even as a rug with the head stuffed. 



The above directions apply to all carnivorous animals, and, with slight 

 modifications, to all terrestrial mammals except the elephant, rhinoceros, hip- 

 popotamus, and a few others. Arsenical soap is the great protective against 

 the attacks of insects, rats, cats, dogs, and other vermin ; and poicdered alum 

 is the best dry preservative for the skins of land quadrupeds, assisted, in cer- 

 tain cases, by salt. Professional collectors should preserve all mammal skins 

 in a bath made of salt and alum dissolved in hot water, without drying them 

 at all. I have found that skins so prepared mount so much quicker, easier, 

 and better than if dried, that of late I advise and practise this method exclu- 

 sively. Casual collectors, such as sportsmen and travellers, will on many ac- 

 counts find it less trouble to preserve their specimens in a dry state, after th» 

 method described above. 



Loss OF Life in British India by Wild Beasts and Serpents. 



Few persons have an adequate conception of the abundance of dangerous 

 animals in India, and the appalling loss of life they occasion. In spite of 

 zealous sportsmen, liberal rewards, poisons, pitfalls, and all other engines of 

 destruction with which the people make war against teeth, claws, and poisonous 

 fangs, the dangerous beasts still hold their own. In the United States, if a man 

 loses his life by a wild animal, forty million people are informed of it in less 

 than a fortnight. The subjoined tables, compiled from oflJcial reports and un- 

 deniably correct, will show either how little is known generally of what ia 

 transpiring in India, or else how little the world cares. With a reasonable 

 allowance of variations, sometimes in one direction and sometimes in another, 

 it may be said that the figures here recorded remain practically the same, year 

 after year. The various governments pay out annually over one hundred 

 thousand rupees in rewards, but instead of bringing about the extermination of 



